I grew up in a house at the heart of the bachelor cluster. At the time, no one saw a pattern. It was only later, after the murder, the sheriff started his map with the colored pins.
The farm was known as the Old Wolfe Place long after my grandparents bought it. I pictured the gray old things ripping apart a deer carcass in the corner as I crunched my tater tots at the kitchen table.
They became people later, of course, through stories my grandmother told.
The Wolfes had one daughter, Gertie. She would age into a character worthy of tall tales, but first she was the victim of a father who would not let her date. His filibuster ended when she was nearly through her teens. The boy who came wore a boutonnière and the snowball bush was in full roar. The only problem… her dad wanted to go along. Gertie never got asked out again.
Did the spinstership of Gertie Wolfe carry the germ of the Benton County bachelor epidemic? If there is a science of loneliness, is it a chemistry or a biology? Maybe it’s a meteorology, something caught up with the clouds. I only know that I have been a student all my life.
Gertie’s first cousin, Millie, lived in the house just down the road. Millie’s only child was Frank, the most proximate bachelor.
Frank died of MS in his early 30s. I remember him always driving by real slow in his copper-colored Chevy van, at first to keep from coating his prized possession with dust, and later because that was all the faster his disease would let him go.
About a mile south the ground started to roll and the bachelors started turning up in pairs. Red and Evelyn Broom raised two bachelors. Jim was tall and skinny, with the proverbial shock of red hair. He had a flinty face with freckles and acne scars. I remember the kids on the school bus called him “fossil face” behind his back.
His younger brother Dave was more of a looker, with a lot of floppy ‘70s hair. He dated many girls, but we heard, could never seem to stick with one for long.
The father, Red, would on Christmas Eve make the rounds as Santa Claus. I remember his costume being unbearably old-fashioned, frayed and rubbed shiny in places, especially the rosy/chubby cheeks of the plastic mask. He brought us oranges and apples. But we never ate fruit. Brownies and “coon turd” cookies were what our palettes had grown to love and demand. But there was more to distain about the innocent Santa. By the 1970s, no one showed up at one’s door unannounced. It just didn’t happen. And if someone dared to break that third wall of nuclear family bliss, they would be shot (with many apologies after the fact, of course) or laughed off the place.
MAINTENANCE ENDS 